Julia Kagan has written about personal finance for more than 25 years and for Investopedia since 2014. The former editor of Consumer Reports, she is an expert in credit and debt, retirement planning, home ownership, employment issues, and insurance. She is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College (A.B., history) and has an MFA in creative nonfiction from Bennington College.
Janet Berry-Johnson is a CPA with 10 years of experience in public accounting and writes about income taxes and small business accounting.
Katrina Ávila Munichiello is an experienced editor, writer, fact-checker, and proofreader with more than fourteen years of experience working with print and online publications. In 2011, she became editor of World Tea News, a weekly newsletter for the U.S. tea trade. In 2013, she was hired as senior editor to assist in the transformation of Tea Magazine from a small quarterly publication to a nationally distributed monthly magazine. Katrina also served as a copy editor at Cloth, Paper, Scissors and as a proofreader for Applewood Books. Since 2015 she has worked as a fact-checker for America’s Test Kitchen’s Cook’s Illustrated and Cook’s Country magazines. She has published articles in The Boston Globe, Yankee Magazine, and more. In 2011, she published her first book, A Tea Reader: Living Life One Cup at a Time (Tuttle). Before working as an editor, she earned a Master of Public Health degree in health services and worked in non-profit administration.
Key person insurance is a life insurance policy that a company purchases on the life of an owner, a top executive, or another individual considered critical to the business. The company is the beneficiary of the policy and pays the premiums. This type of life insurance is also known as "key man (or "keyman") insurance," "key woman insurance," and "business life insurance."
Key person insurance offers a financial cushion if the sudden loss of a certain individual would profoundly negatively affect the company’s operations. The death benefit essentially buys the company time to find a new person or to implement other strategies to save (or shut down) the business.
In a small business, the key person is usually the owner, the founders, or perhaps a key employee or two. The main qualifying point is whether the person’s absence would cause major financial harm to the company. If this is the case, key person insurance is definitely worth considering.
In addition to life insurance, key person insurance is also available as disability coverage in case the individual is incapacitated and no longer able to work.
For key person insurance, a company purchases a life insurance policy on certain employee(s), pays the premiums, and is the beneficiary of the policy. In the event of the person’s death, the company receives the policy’s death benefit.
That money can be used to cover the costs of recruiting, hiring, and training a replacement for the deceased person. If the company doesn’t believe it can continue operations, it can use the money to pay off debts, distribute money to investors, provide severance benefits to employees, and close the business down in an orderly manner. ГЛИЗЕ Key person insurance gives the company some options other than immediate bankruptcy.
To determine whether a business needs this kind of coverage, company leaders must consider who is irreplaceable in the short term. In many small businesses, it’s the owner who does most things, such as keeping the books, managing employees, handling key customers, etc. Without this person, the business can come to a stop.
Key person insurance can cover a company against a range of risks. For example, it may provide:
How much insurance a company needs will depend on the size and nature of the business and the key person’s role. It’s worth asking for quotes on $100,000, $250,000, $500,000, $750,000, and $1 million policies and comparing the costs of each.
The cost will also depend on whether the company buys a term life policy or a permanent life policy. Term life is almost always significantly cheaper.
In addition, the cost of the coverage will vary according to the insured person’s age and overall health, just like most other types of life insurance.
One major insurer, for example, would currently charge $107 a month for a $500,000, 20-year term policy on a healthy 50-year-old male. Raising the coverage to $1 million would bring the monthly cost to $190.
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